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I Stopped Meditating

I stopped meditating for a few months.

Sometimes, when everything in your life just seems so much bigger than before, we can often set aside the so-called smaller things in order to focus and cope with the larger things.

But here’s the thing: it’s the small things that add up over time, which help us to deal with the big stuff.

From December until now, in mid-March 2026, my daily routine and ritual consisted of a short prayer to my goddess, and occasional walks when I had the time out on the heath. Over the winter holidays, when I was travelling, even this fell by the wayside until I returned home. Daily meditations went out the window because I thought I just didn’t have the time.

What I forgot was this one essential truth: we can always make time for the things that really matter in our lives.

It was the end of February, and after a long, hard day editing my latest book, Lovers and Lies (Witches of the New Forest, Book 5, coming out in April), I went upstairs to sit at the window in my disused meditation space. This seat offers me a wonderful view of the back garden and beyond, down the little valley that leads to the stream at the end of the lane that eventually flows out to the sea. My mind was a mess of worry, busy thoughts, and more.

And then I put them all down for ten brief seconds.

I watched the pine trees swaying in the breeze, and heard the blackbird singing in the evening light. And for those ten seconds, seeing the natural world just outside my window, just being, doing its own thing, I left all my mental baggage and enjoyed a moment of just existing, quietly, in that very moment.

It brought tears of relief to my eyes.

It is so difficult to describe that feeling in words. It was like I was carrying heavy luggage around in my mind and body, and I had simply set it down and taken a long, steadying breath.

And I then realised that I didn’t want to pick up those heavy bags again.

On and off, when I could, at the end of each working day, I went upstairs to look out that window and reconnect for a few minutes. Sometimes I was successful. Most of the time I was not. And then I knew that I had to do more. I had to reinstate my daily meditation practice.

And so I am. For fifteen minutes a day, to begin with, I am going to just sit and release all the thoughts that are whirring around in my brain. I want to feel that beautiful release of setting down that baggage and instead walking through life with just my carry-on. Light, easy to carry and easy to set down, this is how I want to move through the world again. We can lose sight so quickly of what really matters to us. There are so many distractions, so many so-called refuges that are anything but. For me, I know what works. And that is sitting quietly, observing all my crazy whirlwind thoughts, and then letting them go, one by one, as I set down my baggage for the day and walk into the world slightly less mentally encumbered.

Just as whenever I fly back to Canada to visit my family, I only ever take carry-on luggage. Easy to move, small and lightweight, no extra expenses. No worries about lost luggage, no waiting in the luggage area after a flight, I can just walk out of the airport and get on with my holiday. This is how I plan to move through life. It’s only the essentials that matter.

I’d like to thank that pine tree and blackbird, who reminded me of what it is that I needed to focus on in my life right now, when I had lost my way.

And I will meditate and give myself the time to remember this valuable lesson.

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More Peace and Less the Joy of Viciousness

Being a bit of a hermit living out on the far eastern edges of England and not engaging all that much online in favour of working with the land and the local people around me, I miss a lot of the intensity, drama, and other goings-on in the Pagan/Witchcraft/Heathen/Druid community. The online community is but one of many communities in which people can gather, and yet for the last decade or two seems to have taken prominence over others. Whether this is a good thing or not I am not going to judge. What I will comment on in this blog post, however, is the validity of one’s own practice, religion, or path in light of the divisiveness that communities can create, which in today’s day and age the loudest seems to be the online community.

This is nothing new. Communities are where people gather, and where people gather there will always be shit-talking. People are people. They are wonderful and loving, they are kind and compassionate, they are cruel and mean, and they are stirrers and troublemakers. There’s nothing you can really do about other people, online or off, and the only real changes you can make are to your own life, letting that be an example for others.

In a magical community, there are extra forces at work, different powers at play, and yet at the heart of it all is simple humanity. There is good and bad in the world, there are good and bad people and everything in between. We all have actions, deeds, or thoughts we regret, as well as beautiful acts of generosity and love. What we need to remember, and indeed foster, is something that I heard Maxine Sanders say in an interview with the Museum of Witchcraft back in December 2017.

She stated that we need more peace and less of the joy of viciousness in our lives. That there is nothing worse that sanctimosity without the holy. These phrases have really struck a chord with me, and make me think of what so many people tell me about the online community today, and what little I have myself experienced over the last twenty years. Before we had the internet these things still occurred, and as I have already stated, people are people. But the far-reaching abundance and ease with which sanctimosity and viciousness can occur online behind a screen of anonymity is something totally new to humanity, and is indeed changing the way that we humans think and behave in the world at large. And it is something that does indeed frighten me.

The main point that I am trying to reach in a rather circumventuous (yes, I just made that word up and I like it) route is that I feel there is a real need to concern yourself less with what others are doing in their own spiritual practice/Craft/religion and to focus on your own work more. It is far easier to belittle, attack or comment on other people’s work than to take a good, hard look at your own. Looking outwards is usually always simpler than looking inwards. But understanding your own self will help you to better understand others far quicker than focusing outwards all the time, in my opinion.

I wrote a blog post at the end of last year about what your life is like when no one is watching, and I feel that ties in neatly with what I am trying to say here. Concern yourself less with what other people think, and take the time to really know and understand what it is that you think, feel, and should work towards. In a magical life and practice, this will certainly be different for every individual, based on their life circumstances such as upbringing, environment, culture and society, economic stability and a whole host of things that fit within Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (although needs don’t necessarily form a hierarchy). If each person’s practice is unique according to each person’s life experience, then how on earth can anyone tell another that they are doing it wrong? Is this not an ego and control issue, rather than trying to further the Craft/spirituality/religion?

Let’s take Maxine’s advice to heart. Let us find the holy in our own lives, without being sanctimonious about it. Let’s leave off the joy of viciousness in favour of more peace in our own lives. Let’s focus on ourselves and our own practice, and stop comparing them and our lives to others’ on the internet or in the real life community, because we are not getting the full picture in either situation. We can be inspired by those whose words and actions lift us up, and open up new pathways of being, for sure. But living a life of comparison is an empty one.

Live your life, and work your magic as it best works for you.

Because that’s all that you really can do.

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December Photography

Here are some of my favourite photos that I took this month, out on the heath. It’s lovely to be out there, when I’m able, capturing these moments in time.

Happy Holidays!

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What Does Your Life Look Like When No One is Watching?

Social media, urgh. Devices, urgh. Sharing every aspect of you life with people you’ve never even met, urgh. Right now, this is 99% of internet life for most people these days.

I’m going to go on a little rant now, about the ‘good old days’ when we didn’t have mobile phones, internet, heck, even cable tv. Yes, I’m GenX. As kids, we lived most of our lives outside, unless there was a thunderstorm or it was colder than -25C. Friends came over to play, and we had in-person conversations and social interactions. It wasn’t abstract, it wasn’t one-step removed from a real personal meeting. And I feel that we are losing that reality at an incredible rate.

Even if, like me, you’re perfectly happy being on your own and social interactions are kept to a bare minimum, there is still so much relationship to be had with the real world, the natural world around you. I’m hardly ever lonely, because there are birds around me, deer, trees, the sea, the forest. But all that is being sacrificed to spend time online in a virtual world where you can’t smell the woodsmoke on the air, feel the wintery sunlight on your face or walk through the dewy grass. And yes, I see the irony of expressing myself with these words you are reading here on my online blog, my voice being carried virtually across continents to people I’ve never met. But just bear with for a few moments longer, if you would.

I love silence. I crave silence. Most of my day is spent in silence, the only sound the birds in the garden and the clacking of the keyboard as I write my books. But then that wonderful silence is broken by having to post on social media, to remain visible, to post content to keep the algorithm going. And yet I often wonder as I feed the beast that is social media, am I being nourished as well?

I am providing content for these platforms, but am I getting anything in return? When it all comes down to it, there is very little return on the investment of my time and effort spent in these places. But we are taught, aren’t we, that we must post, we must share, we must continue to be present in these spaces. It’s one of the greatest illusions of all time.

And we can get caught up in it all, letting it seep into every single moment of every single day. I have to retrain my brain, because every time I see a wonderful sunset, I want to share it with the world. When I go for a walk and see the deer, I whip out my phone to record them, hoping to inspire others with the beauty of nature. But I am missing out on being present in that moment, with the sunset, with the deer, with the world that is trying to interact with me. It’s like going down to the pub with your mate, who is trying to video everything for their own social media. What’s the point? Who does that nourish? Certainly not one’s own self or the person you are with.

It’s the greatest con of all time.

Here’s the question we should be asking ourselves, day in and day out:

What does my life look like, when no one is watching?

Some people might realise that they don’t even have a life that goes undocumented, and they then must create one, which can be an utter joy and a balm for the soul or frightening as hell. Others realise how much of their lives are a complete and utter illusion, and want the real stuff, the good stuff, that which feeds our soul and not the beast.

We have to release ourselves from this need for validation.

As a self-published author I need social media in order to get the word out about my work. But social media does not need me. It’s an imbalanced relationship. Some people might say the same of cats, but they are obviously not cat people.

It’s okay to live a life that is your own, and not shared with the world. I am making a serious effort to reign in the desire, the need, the built-in mode of share, share, share that social media instructs us to do. Because for the most part, it’s not to our benefit. It changes the way we think, the way we behave, and we can completely lose ourselves in the process. And that’s not something I’m willing to do.

So I will be spending less time in a virtual world, hoping to retrain my brain to be with me in this world, where the cat wants to play, the branches on the trees are sparkling in the sunlight after the rain, and remembering what my life is like when no one is watching.

Because that’s the most important life of all.  

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Feel the magic…

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It has been 1 year!!!

It has been exactly one year since Hedge Witch, Book 1 of the Witches of the New Forest series came out. I want to thank everyone for their kind words, support, comments and reviews. This series has been so successful, and I am just over the moon with it all. I love writing stories and creating magical worlds to escape in, and I look forward to writing more books in this series! Book 5 to come out in 2026!
Witches of the New Forest, the new series by Joanna van der Hoeven.
Available for Kindle, paperback and Kobo editions.
Buy your copy now!
For the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedge-Witch-Witches-Forest-Book-ebook/dp/B0DJL1X635
For the US: https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Witch-Witches-Forest-Book-ebook/dp/B0DJL1X635
For Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Hedge-Witch-Witches-Forest-Book/dp/B0DLLFZDKM

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Deer Rut video now up!

Here it is, the video for this year’s deer rut! I didn’t have as much time as I normally do to get out onto the heath for filming, what with the book release of Smugglers and Secrets, Book 4 of the Witches of the New Forest series at the end of October. But I did manage to film some old favourites, including Aelfric, Boromir, Faramir, Theoden, Merry and Pippin!

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November Skies

I hope that you all had a lovely Hallowe’en, Samhain, Winter Finding/Winter Nights, etc. Even though it has warmed up here in Suffolk, England these last few days, it still feels like winter is nearly here. There is a scent in the air, something indescribable that forebodes the season of long, cold nights. The light in the sky has turned wintry, the scudding clouds across the moon look moody, and the wild winds are here—yes, the Wild Hunt has certainly begun!

This weekend was the book launch for Book 4, Smugglers and Secrets from my fiction series, Witches of the New Forest. It’s been a crazy weekend, but I am overwhelmed by the amount of support for this series. The book sales were phenomenal, and Smugglers and Secrets reached number 11 in the top 100 paranormal ghost romance books on Amazon! It is still in the top 100 bestsellers in all three of its categories, and I am just so chuffed about it all. As well, production for the audiobook of Hedge Witch, Book 1 in the series, has begun!

Some friends and I had a lovely ritual in the back garden on Friday, followed by a meal indoors. I had found some writings on an old Suffolk ritual called Horkey, or Horkney, and so tried to recreate some of that for us. It was fun! My neighbour even played her accordion for us during a part of the ritual where we sat and thought about our ancestors after laying down offerings for them. It was a very special moment, with the rising moon shining in the sky, the wind blowing and the darkness descending. It’s a memory that I will cherish for many years to come.

The deer rut continues, though it feels like it is winding down now. I shall endeavor to get some more photographs before the end, and share them with you here. Below you will find the few that I have managed to get in between the work of getting this book out, and the planning for the ritual we shared.

I love the month of November. The dark, windy days just seem to set the mood for this time of year. I don’t mind the encroaching night, nor the loss of the warmth. Instead, I love going out for walks, feeling the reflective and melancholy nature of this time, when everything is winding down, the skies are often grey and the feeling of the year’s work rest wearily in my bones. I’ve done all that I can do, and now it is time to simply be, to rest, to let everything go as the wild winds howl, the leaves come down, the rain lashes and the cold nights settle in.

I often feel a pull towards celebrating and working in the pre-Christian traditions of my Germanic and Scandinavian ancestors at this time of year. It’s a soul-deep yearning for connections to the gods, the wights, the ancestors. Though I work with the goddess Freya all year round and Skadhi during the cold season, this winter I might explore working with other deities, perhaps ones I haven’t tried to connect to before such as Freyr, Ullr or Odin. I enjoy the simplicity of a blót, the connection of a sumbel, the forthrightness of the core values that are held dear and the feeling of rootedness that it brings to me, as if I am walking with my ancestors from an age long gone, but which is returning to the modern world.

From here on the Suffolk coast of England, I wish you all Waes Hael!  

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Samhain Blessings, Blessed Winternights, and Happy Hallowe’en!

Wishing you the very best this season. Blessings of the ancestors be with you as we walk into winter.